Love and Prayers on a Dark Night

In 1986, my wife, Janet, and I had been married a little over a year.  We had moved to Shreveport so I could find a job.  I had not found a job.  Janet, however, was working at a gas station on the night shift.  I would go with her to work and sit in the parking lot.  When her boss left; I would come into the store.  I did this to make us both feel safe. 

One night a tall distinguished priest filled up his car and came into the station to pay.  When he came in, my wife introduced us as Catholics who had just moved to the area.  She also told him I was without a job and asked that he pray for us.  He said he would. My wife then asked where his parish was so we could visit.  He introduced himself as Bishop William Friend, Bishop of the Diocese of Shreveport. (Before this I always thought he traveled with an entourage.) We asked for his blessing.  He blessed us and left.

Pope Benedict XVI said that “an act of love is where we find true happiness.”  When I heard this, I thought the act of love would bring true happiness to the one who brings the act of love.  I remember this simple act of love now and how it has led me to true happiness.

Everyone has a time when we feel alone.  Sometimes it happens when there are people all around us who love us.  Sometimes it happens to even those of us who know Christ and know that God is always present.   It is a feeling of an absence from God and grace.  It is something that everyone goes through.   St. John of the Cross called it the Dark Night of the Soul.  None are spared the dark nights.  These are are necessary so we can learn.

My dark night lasted for many years.  It began before college.  A dark place when I placed myself before God through worldliness.  St. John of the Cross says that God dwells substantially in each of our souls.  I built a wall around that presence of God.   

During this time, I looked for Him.  Searching I visited many different Churches; but, I was not going to look for my answer in a Baptist or Catholic Church in which I had been raised.  In all this looking, I could not or would not open myself to Him. Always, I found a way to place a wall of excuses between Christ and me.   My damaged character caused me to question where was God in my life.   

College was a time when I was looking for my expectations of perfection.  I was looking to please my self.  Many of the women I dated, probably pulled me further away from God; but, the faith that lived in me anchored me so I did not drift too far away. 

Then God brought a beautiful person in my life.  She chose me.  She pursued me and with God’s plan for both of us, she caught me.  I look back and see how great this was. This was my wife Janet, who would bring to me a solid foundation of faith.  Janet is one of God’s greatest gifts in my life. 

My future mother in-law insisted that we would be married in the Catholic Church. I had been baptized Catholic but raised in the Baptist Church.  I had a relationship with Christ.  I knew He was my savior.  But, by the time we got married, inside I felt separated from God.

After we got married, it only got worse.  My father died.   I had a hard time finding a good job. This made me feel that I was not a good husband.  I would get a job and then loose it.  I thought any company that would hire me, would surely be closing its doors within a year.  

During this time, I especially felt that God had abandoned me; but, He never does.  God loved me.  My family and friends loved me.  My wife loved me.  In all my emphasis on me, maybe, I think that I did not love myself.

Janet put up with a lot.  One night with no place to stay, we slept in our car at a rest area along the side the interstate.  I had just found a job so we could not leave the area.  We did find an apartment and then a house.   But this just added to my self torment.  Being a naive and honest person, I did not think a bank would take advantage of me.  Through some creative bookkeeping they allowed me to buy a house I could not afford.  Then, I lost my job, again.  I suffered from self pity.  I remember wanting everyone feel as bad as I did. But my wife always gave me all that she was.  She believed in me and gave me all her love, support and all her trust.  

My wife, mother and mother in-law always said, pray and leave it in God’s hands.  Janet insisted that we go to mass.  Most Sundays, if we had gas money, we did.  She rolled a lot of pennies.  In those times, I would pray for the strength to abandon myself and to be truly led by God.  It was a time of learning; but, a time when I did not know I was learning.  If you want quick happiness, God does not always work that way.  Looking back, I see I had too narrow a perspective.  I saw only me.  My perspective was narrowed by those walls I had been building.  I did not see God in me or the love of Christ that was all around me.

Through the prayers and help of many, I was able to get a good job.  Then the day after I found out I had gotten the job, again the bottom fell out.  Janet was eating lunch with my sister in-law when she lost consciousness and could not be awakened.  The emergency responders had to call in a life support helicopter to rush her to a trauma hospital.  I was driving to meet them for lunch and I saw them place Janet in the helicopter and leave.  All I could do was pray and follow.

Janet was flown to the Schumpert Medical Center, a Catholic Hospital in Shreveport.  When they let me see her, she was awake.  I again felt an absence of God and that inner darkness.  Emergency room, helicopter life flight, emergency doctors, neurologist, now what was I going to do?  When I got the bill, it was devastation.  I was directed to the director of the hospital a sister who told me not to worry.  She asked if I we were Catholic.  Yes, I answered.  She prayed for my family and told me to speak with my priest.  I was such a good Catholic; I didn’t even know the priest name.

God does not expect us to be perfect and without faults.  God just expects us to keep trying never giving up in our spiritual fight.  I could have but I never did.

My wife began to have seizures and these scared me.  I turned to the only help I really knew.  Many nights as she would have seizures, I would sit beside her, place my hands on her and pray. I would ask God for help and to give me the strength to take care of my wife.  But God does not work our demanded schedules.

God’s miracles sometimes happen in ways that we do not see.  My job started and it provided medical benefits.  Janet could afford to go to specialist.  Then my children were born.  I would hold them and pray for them to be safe and healthy.  I turned everything that was important to me, my wife and my children, over to God’s hands.  All the prayers and turning everything over to God worked miracles in me.

I had many people praying for me.  Prayers came from my mother and mother in-law, relatives and my church family, priests and religious sisters and a bishop.  Always praying for me was my wife.  Even though I prayed with my whole heart, I still had that feeling of the absence of God.

Prayers are simple acts of love that bring true happiness.  It had been a long time since I had truly felt close to God.  It had been almost 20 years that I had felt that absence, since I was a teenager and now I was in my thirties.  I had become active in my small Catholic community.  I always went to mass.  When my oldest daughter was preparing for her first communion, I told my wife I wanted to make my first communion at the same time. 

With Janet behind me like she had always been, I walked forward.  I was behind my daughter and five other first graders making first communion.  The Priest held the Eucharist before me and said “The Body of Christ.”  With Christ on my tongue, the darkness left.